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Collections

The Department of Nordic Research differs from the other departments of the Faculty of Humanities in a number of ways. The most important difference being that part of the standard obligation of teaching students is converted to other kinds of obligations, ranging from scientifically based publications of source material to the establishment and maintenance of archives. In this context the collections play a central part.

At the Arnamagnaean Institute about 1,400 manuscripts are stored, mainly manuscripts from the collection of the Icelandic philologist and historian Árni Magnússon (1663-1730). Supplementary material includes a collection of Danish and Norwegian diplomas, as well as Icelandic manuscripts, originally part of the collection of the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask (1787-1832), and purchased in 1833 from Rasks heirs.

The Section of Dialectology holds a vast archive of records and recordings of Danish dialects. The vocabulary of the classic dialects are recorded on paper slips, and the sound archive contains about 6,000 recordings of Danish spoken language.

At the Name Research Section the place-name collections contain name forms from the oldest runic inscriptions to modern recordings. The map collection and orally transmitted recordings of older place-names from the 20th century supplement this as the base of the section's research, along with the somewhat less comprehensive collection of personal names.